Ipad education

[v-600]

Hi all,

I'm a primary school teacher in the UK. To cut a long story short (its a mighty tale with dragon slaying, charities and local funding) we are, in effect, trialling the use of ipads in schools. Every child in year 5 will have their own ipad 2 and we are looking for ways to incorporate this in the curriculum and find cool uses for them.

As a teacher with a passion for music and ICT I initially thought I want to form an ipad orchestra/band. I also want to investigate using VNC to duplicate the whiteboards display on the ipads to let the children interact with the board.

Now I want to throw the floor open to you knowledgeable and imaginative lot. Have you got any suggestions or ideas we could try. Don't worry if you're not sure if your ideas are suitable for children (within reason). We will take ideas and adapt if necessary or disregard if we don't think they are suitable.

I know there are 3D modelling apps, painting apps, video conferencing. I would like to find something that might work with collaborative story writing (can be done with a wiki and normal web browser if needed).

Like i said, any ideas you have, share away

 

[poofyhairguy]

Angry Birds teaches a little physics!

 

[v-600]

Angry Birds teaches a little physics!

I was already thinking of something similar. Simulation is mentioned in the National Curriculum I seem to recall. There is a bridge building game that I also like.

 

[Mopetar]

I highly suggest reading Fraser Speirs's blog, which details the experiences of someone who's already implemented a similar program at a different school. His blog provides some good insight to how they've used iPads successfully in their school along with a some of the issues that they've experienced and how they were resolved.

 

[alent1234]

My username on Twitter is the same as here. I have at least one list devoted mostly to following educational apps you can subscribe to or at least get the accounts to follow

 

[Aikouka]

Splashtop has a whiteboard app for the iPad, but I have no idea how good it is:

http://www.splashtop.com/whiteboard

 

[pm]

I haven't seen any good collaborative iPad education apps to be used in a classroom but I haven't looked much for them.

My younger daughter (age 7) loves "Stack the States"... which is of limited use to someone in the UK, I guess. There's also "Stack the Countries".

My older daughter (age 12) has been using "Hello Hello! French" which is pretty well done. She also has found "Algebra Touch" to be useful - the whole animation of how to solve algebra problems has been very helpful and she enjoys using it more than she likes learning out of a book, so mroe than anything it has helped with motivation.

But these are almost certainly not what you are looking for. I would think you would be looking for good collaborative educational apps for a classroom, not just good educational apps. I'm not sure what to suggest. Apple's webpage has some suggestions: http://www.apple.com/education/why-apple/#teaching

Some of these look good:
http://www.edgalaxy.com/journal/2010/4/5/top-5-ipad-apps-for-educators.html

Another anecdote which is not really relevant to this issue , but is on-topic is that my mother volunteered as a parent helper at a low-income grade school in central California and she would take a group aside for reading and she used an educational game on her iPad as a reward for students doing well reading. She said it was surprisingly effective as a motivational tool for students. Discipline improved, and children were much more inclined to pay attention and focus - because as a reward they got to play some educational game (not sure which) on the iPad.

 

[ew915]

I don't know if its a good idea, because kids of that age will just break the ipads and the cost of replacement is quite high.

 

[postaled]

Just as an FYI. If you haven't looked into it yet, the licensing is different for education.

You need have a license for every copy of an app that you have installed. Very much the opposite of the normal consumer usage.

Of course on this note there is educational volume licensing available.

Just giving the heads up... just because its practically impossible to enforce it currently, doesn't mean they won't in the future.

 

[mirandu04]

Angry Birds teaches a little physics!

yeah; i am sure Einstein would have discovered e=mc(2) sooner if he would had iPad. Imagine what iPad 2 could offer

 

[v-600]

Thanks for the twitter link and blog.

A few other people on various forums have suggested geotagging photos to create collages, or playing geocaching games for grid references with google maps.